Steve Simms's Blog, page 264

At the intersection of hope & despair

At the intersection of hope and despair, take the uphill road to hope, not the downhill road to despair. You’re alive; be delighted. Let God shine in and delight up the darkness in your heart.

I’m not interested in apathy. I want God’s fire continually blazing in my soul.

The voice of apathy lazily mumbles sweet nothings. Indifference is okay with whatever. Apathy speaks: “I can take it or leave it,” “Whatever,” “Either way,” “It doesn’t matter,” “I’m fine with that,” “No big deal.”

Christ sets people free from the gravitational pull of indifference and sends them soaring with love and compassion. You can’t follow Jesus if you won’t continually take steps in His direction. When Jesus (the Light of the world) becomes your delight, joy will freely flow from within you.

Getting to know people heart-to-heart is an antidote to indifference. Another way to attack apathy is by watching or reading something that has touched your heart in the past. When your heart and your conscience are at odds, follow your conscience.

You can’t work up apathy, but you can play it down by taking the field for a just cause (whether you feel like it or not). It’s impossible to be involved and indifferent at the same instant.

Perhaps mundane, passive, apathetic church meetings are not a good witness for Christianity. Following Jesus is a lifetime process. It’s not just a short walk down a church aisle to repeat a prayer after a preacher. Jesus said His followers should “endure to the end.” True Christianity involves lifetime follow through. (See Matthew 24:13.)

If you faithfully let the risen Jesus be your “sense of direction,” your life will daily unfold in ways that amaze you. I find the best wine to help me is the “new wine” of the Holy Spirit. There’s nothing like God’s holy inebriation. Let the God of all Creation fill you with His inebriation and delight will hang over your heart as when you’re playing with a puppy.

The only people who think the Bible is uninteresting are those who have never read it. Take a look in the Book and see! Christ calls us from our comfort zone to His humble zone.

I lasso, tie up, and drive out every ungodly thought faster than a rodeo calf roper. Ignore temptations, distractions, insults, and anything else that tries to get you off track of a positive, healthy life.

Jesus is louder than words

The voice of Jesus is louder than words. His inner promptings are more powerful than any sermon. Train your heart to hear Him.

A hard heart and tearless eyes are a form of self-deception, not self-protection. Without accurate perception, Truth becomes the exception.  Misperception is deception. How’s your truth reception?

The shadows of guilt are long, dark, and tormenting, but the light of Christ dispels them.  When you block the light from your heart, you soil your soul with scary shadows. Don’t stay stuck in the shadows of your sin. Let God’s light freely shine within.

To repent is to turn your back on shadowy thoughts and behaviors and to begin to live in the Light of the Son of God. Don’t let darkness depress, defile, or foul up your life. Live in Christ’s light.

Christians aren’t just called to mirror Christ; they’re called to let Him live in and animate them. To belittle others is to be little. Early Christ-followers met in meetups to mutually minister to, encourage, and exhort one another as led by the risen Jesus.

Who’s responsible for evil?

When you speak out against evil and wrongdoing, don’t ignore your own life and heart. If you watch evil, think evil, are entertained by evil, you’ll have a hard time not embracing evil and being influenced by it. If we won’t allow God to establish His sovereign and righteous government in our own heart, how will the kingdom of God come to earth?

To blame God for tragedy, separates you from your greatest source of comfort. Christianity teaches that God made all things good and that evil is the result of rebellion against God. Evil is produced by the misuse and abuse of human free will. Don’t drag wrongdoing along the path of your life.

If you accept wrongdoing as normal for you and don’t resist it, it will gain ever stronger control over your life.Don’t let evil entrap you. The battle between good and evil takes place in every human being. Don’t let evil entrap you.

Looking beyond the Catholic priesthood

With all the reports of sexual abuse by priests, perhaps we should ask:  “Who are the real priests?”

Benched Christians

The purpose of teaching people about Jesus is so they can follow Him, not so they can be dependent on constant teaching. Church likes to bench Christians, however, Jesus wants to activate them, empower them, and fire the up!

When benched and on the sideline, a congregation is ejected from interactive involvement with Christ. It’s time for Christians to come off the bench and begin to love like Jesus loved! Instead of saying, “Please be seated,” perhaps a pastor should say, “Get out of your seats and aggressively pursue God.”

Christianity isn’t a park bench for sitting on; it’s a spiritual battlefield for freedom fighting. To grow strong in Christ you have to get off the bench. If church ever trains its members to get off the sidelines and on the spiritual battlefield, it will change the world.

A congregation should gather for Christ’s manifestation and holy infestation, not just for a religious oration. Preachers try to explain Christianity. Maybe it would be more effective if they would facilitate an atmosphere to demonstrate it.  Instead, church is often like a battlefield memorial, full of benches and monuments so you can lazily remember spiritual heroes of the past.

Christ doesn’t call people to sit on the sideline and watch life go by. Christians need spiritual “get up and go.” It’s okay to hear a talk about Christ, but it’s much more powerful to experience His reality working in and through your own life.

People who are unaware of the living Jesus think it an odd thing that individuals can be led by Him. If you’re only going to do one of these (hear a sermon or read the Bible) — read the Bible!

Grace is undeserved access to God’s presence and power. It’s not an excuse to rebel against Him. Every single breath we take is a sign of God’s power in our life, yet we notice so very few of them.

Christianity is light, not lecture

When there’s light, you see. You don’t need someone to describe everything to you. True Christianity is light, not lecture. Over analysis has filled contemporary Christianity with spiritual paralysis. To ponder and try to figure God out pales in comparison to personally experiencing God in wonder and awe! When I open my heart to Christ, He turns on delight in my life!

Christianity’s not about how much you know, but about how freely you flow with the Spirit’s wind within. Christ is too often overthought and under experienced. Maybe instead of trying to teach Christians what to think, it would be more effective to train them to flow with the Holy Spirit.

Here’s a definition: A sermon is a church talk that has been overthought and underfelt. To let the brain work without the flowing of the heart, is like running an engine with no oil. Some people overthink God; some ignore Him, but it’s more effective to take some time to get to know God. Sometimes overthinking God creates theology that’s not there.

God doesn’t want you to be His strategist. He wants you to be a Spirit-led catalyst, a living example of His presence in your life. Preacher’s thoughts, neatly packaged, are soon forgotten, but one thought from God that burns in your heart is remembered forever.

The kingdom of God will have no meaning to you if you are unwilling to be an obedient subject to His will. Gladness and glee should not be rare human experiences, but daily delights as we appreciate God’s gifts to us! The Bible says God is changing Christians “from glory to glory.” What level of glory are you on? The natural world is so amazingly glorious that it could have never existed without supernatural help.

Break a toxic thought and no longer be distraught. Like a cowboy on a wild horse, you can break a bucking thought and make it obey you. Just don’t let it throw you.

 

 

Care for soul-wounds

It’s almost impossible to convey the love of Christ to people when you feel hostile toward them. Be kind. Life’s ups and downs shouldn’t be a Ferris Wheel, endlessly repeating, but a mountain railroad taking you to a lovely destination.

Soul-wounds need care, treatment, and healing, just like physical wounds do. Don’t neglect your mental and spiritual health care. Many people are so busy that they forget to be soul busy, but true success comes from within.

Just because your brain is grey, your thoughts don’t have to be. Fill your brain with bright, positive, uplifting thoughts. God loves people so much that He wants to help us get untangled from our thoughts and behaviors that are hurting us.

The kingdom of God is not a human hierarchy, but the direct government of God in individual people’s hearts. Early Christianity offers a route to wildness that doesn’t destroy, but sets free, thru the noninstitutionalized Holy Spirit.

Don’t let your lifestyle choices fillet your soul and leave you empty inside. Learn to live so that you are enriched within.

I see partially. God sees entirely. I need to trust God’s viewpoint, not mine.

The real “Supreme Court” is the voice of God speaking in the human conscience. People who silence their conscience tune out the voice of God. Maintaining mental health is much easier when you listen to and obey your conscience.

A culture that encourages people to ignore their conscience (and criticizes those who don’t) will slowly fall into angry anarchy. Following your conscience produces better results than disobeying it. Try it and see.

Language and images are mental and emotional programming. The media you consume will gradually mold you into its likeness.

Instead of an audience of people dangling on one man’s words, church could be a web of people actively supporting one another. No one should be lonely in church. Church should be a living demonstration of Spirit-led community and supernatural caring. When God’s holy spontaneity is rejected by churches, He still seeks individuals who will hear and obey the Spirit way.

Bland faith?

Christianity that fails to produce fire in your soul probably is something less that the real deal. Some people are afraid of blind faith, but I find bland faith far more frightening. Bland faith is powerless. Living faith opens eyes, transforms lives, & sets people gloriously free.

Over-planning quenches the Holy Spirit by eliminating the need for His direct leadership. Asking for and receiving forgiveness from God and from other people is much more powerful than trying to forgive yourself.

Unhappiness is a warning that you’re misusing your mind–an opportunity to readjust your thinking to produce peace and fulfillment. For emotional healing, learning and applying new coping skills is much more effective than merely taking pills. Everybody alive is shaping the future. Shape yours well!

Too many people want filtered water and unfiltered thoughts, but what you drink with your mind can be more harmful than any water. You got where you are by the roads you took. Do you like your destination or is it time to reroute?

Farm your mind; raise a crop of positive, uplifting, peaceful, and encouraging thoughts. Then harvest them daily.

It’s a dangerous thing to delegate your relationship with God to a pastor, a priest, or anyone else. When we make anything human “supreme” in our lives, we step outside of the kingdom of God where God alone is supreme.

 

No need to be sad or boring–the Bible says, “Rejoice.”

No need to be sad, dull, or boring. The Bible says to “rejoice.”

The “shocking” power of Christ in you

Christ-followers have an external power source living inside them that can be activated by faith-filled surrender. However, Church too often trains people to have a passive mind and accept whatever a preacher or priest says, not to think and seek God. However, church could meet to let people experience and apply Christian truth in ministry to one another, like 1 Corinthians 14:26 teaches.

If you put your hope in a priest or preacher, you’ll be disappointed. Put your hope in the risen Jesus and get to know Him. Human leadership can easily interfere with Christ’s leadership. Pastors should train people to listen to and obey Christ, not them. Our way of doing things can block God’s way. Jesus is the Way; let’s follow Him, not a tradition or a program.

The greatest blessing for a Christian is an intimate, ongoing relationship with the risen Jesus. Nothing compares to that!

Having Christ living in you is like holding on to a live electric wire. Both release a current that shakes up your life.

Experiencing other Christ-followers as family is an important aspect of being in the body of Christ. The Bible says a Christ-follower is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Are you continually aware of Christ living in you? You can be if you’re not disconnected.

When you feel attacked by negative thoughts, forcibly and continually think uplifting thoughts. Say them out loud if necessary. When your feelings and your conscience contradict, silence your feelings, not your conscience.

Continually train and exercise your mind to think thoughts that make it healthy and to strongly reject harmful or tormenting thoughts. A passive mind, like an inactive body, becomes unhealthy. Don’t let your mind atrophy and become weak. Use it for self-improvement.

Take a stroll with the Spirit

Step by step aligned,

Not just from time to time,

But every moment of every day.